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Subject:Re: Best laid plans of mice From:Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Tue, 2 Dec 2008 12:07:19 -0800 (PST)
Craig, unfortunately, your story doesn't surprise me at all; in fact, I'd consider it kind of standard. It's always been my experience with programmers and engineers that checking the documentation is always the very last thing they'll do. They always prefer to go straight into the code. More than once I've asked programmers, if they had to work on software that had been created by someone else who was now gone, what kind of documents would they find most useful in helping them understand the product? And in every case the answer was, code comments - because they wouldn't bother with looking at any kind of design documents unless they couldn't figure out the source code.
I once did a run book for our company's database server, at the request of the head DBA. I thought, good, maybe they're finally getting serious about business continuity/data protection measures. Nope. The guy did nothing with it but print a copy and take it with him when he left the company a week later. He only wanted it so he could show prospective employers something about what kind of work he'd been doing.
> From: Cardimon, Craig <ccardimon -at- M-S-G -dot- com>
> Subject: Best laid plans of mice
> To: "Technical Writing" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
> Date: Tuesday, December 2, 2008, 9:39 AM
> Once when I l left a place for which I was maintained their
> databases, I
> wrote procedures for all the things I did. I was working as
> a programmer
> at the time.
>
>
>
> I put my notes into a nice binder, showed it to everyone in
> operations,
> went through it with someone, and left it in plain sight.
>
>
>
> Sometime later I discovered the binder got kicked under
> some furniture
> and forgotten. My notes were never used. How about that?
>
>
>
> I actually went back to work at that same company years
> later at another
> location and found my old binder in a box of old papers. I
> retrieved it
> and kept it. I still have it.
>
>
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